


moonfall

by Batman



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, M/M, featuring: immortal cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 07:00:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16153985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batman/pseuds/Batman
Summary: There is no unlearning Tetsurou, after all. There is only leaving him.(Five things of Tetsurou's that ended up in Kei's home, and one that never left.)





	moonfall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nakaharas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nakaharas/gifts).



> for yuna ♡ 
> 
> me revoilà kurotsukki fuckers! 
> 
> section titles from asofterworld. please hover on them for the captions!

** 1\. there are two types of love. true love, and the love we actually get. **

Kei stares in total and absolute disbelief at Vladimir.

‘What are you doing here,’ he says, and his own voice sounds so hoarse and cracked that he winces. Reaches awkwardly behind him towards the nightstand, first for his glasses, then for the little tube of endless water he always keeps beside them. Gulps it down, then resumes staring. ‘Vladimir. It’s six in the morning. What are you doing here.’

Vladimir, of course, only lets out a long, mournful meow in that typical fashion of his, one that only his owner has ever been able to understand. His eyes are as sharp as ever, one blue, one green, standing out against his jet black fur. He doesn’t look a day older since the last time Kei saw him, which, of course, is the deal with immortal cats. In fact, Kei wouldn’t even have been sure that it  _is_  Vladimir if not for that trademark meow. No, that meow he knows all too well.

Just like the only person who can interpret it.

‘Did he send you here?’ Kei asks. ‘Is he all right? Is he pranking me?’

Vladimir shakes his head.

‘Did you run away on your own?’

Vladimir shakes his head.

‘Well, then, just— how did you find this apartment? How did you find— me?’

No meows this time, only Vladimir looking straight into Kei’s eyes with his striking heterochromic gaze, whiskers trembling with every slow breath he takes. The sight is too confusing for six in the morning; too bemusing, maybe too overwhelming. He doesn’t know. It’s six in the morning and he’s just woken up, on fermentation day, the only time he truly gets to sleep in. For all he knows, this is some kind of fever dream; it's moonfall and like every year before this one and after that one, Kei's thoughts always manage to stray towards him. Towards ice crystals and owlets and coffeeshops with singing plants.

Catching himself before he falls into a trance— Vladimir does that to people— he finally breaks eye contact with the cat and yawns, stretches a little. Curls his fingers to make the curtains part a little, and relaxes when he sees that the sunlight is mild. It’s going to be a good, cloudy day; he can feel it in his bones, and one look at the stormglass will confirm it. He’s just going to get himself a nice warm breakfast, check the horoscope, and—

Kuroo Tetsurou’s fucking cat is in his apartment.

An apartment that he shouldn’t know the existence of. On a good cloudy day exactly— he knows— exactly three years since Kei last saw him.

‘Shit,’ Kei groans, doing an about turn and sitting down heavily on the edge of his bed. This is way too much. This is way too much. But it is his current situation, and the only thing he can do about it is to take a deep breath and try to find some solution. So he takes a deep breath and another swig of his endless water, and tries not to look too directly at Vladimir, who, he knows, has been staring at him unblinkingly all this time. He always  _did_  have that look about him.

‘Let’s get in touch with your owner, shall we,’ he sighs, and Vladimir responds with another forlorn meow.

 

☀︎

 

The only person that he can possibly ask for Tetsurou's number without being met with a million and one questions, or too-deliberate silence, is definitely not Bokuto Koutarou. Bokuto is neither  _million questions_ , nor  _deliberate silence_. No, Bokuto would skip right past those two right into the realm of assumptions, declarations, and general festivity that Kei is not prepared to deal with at this early hour.

Nor is Akaashi the right person, for that matter. For his part, he’d fall into that deliberate silence category, only responding in hums for the rest of the conversation with a rather silly conviction that he’s being mysterious, when really, all that shows through is his painful curiosity that his ego’s just barely large enough to overcome. No, no Akaashi either.

No, Kei texts Oikawa. Oikawa is wildly apathetic about anything and everything related to  _everyone’s_  love lives, and Kei’s, never having seen any interesting action, isn’t even on the list. Sure, he’s had his share of one night stands that all somehow ended up knowing about Oikawa but that’s a given; in a day and age when scrying shouldn’t even be needed anymore, the man makes a fantastic living off being an  _informant_ , of all things.

The key part of that sentence is  _makes a living_ , however. Kei punctuates it by sighing as heavily as he can when he gets the only reply he could reasonably have expected from Oikawa Tooru:

→ _And what are my fees?_

 

 _I don’t know_ , Kei replies, impatiently swiping away some nonsense notification from Bokuto about some Facebook game.  _What are your fees?_  →

 

→  _I could very well ask you the reason behind this absurd demand and be content with that_.

 

 _I will pay you whatever amount of money you want if you don’t ask me that._ →

 

→  _That’s what we love to hear! But real talk, sending it to you in a second._

→ _Make me one of those fizzy little trippy lollipops._

 

 _I am an alchemist, not a confectioner_. →

 

→  _Lollipop or no number._

 

 _Oh, fuck you._  →

 

☀︎

 

The number has changed.

Of course it has; Kei's not dense enough not to understand that when things ended between them they really wanted to change paths, go their own way, and that entailed cutting off communication. It's just…he'd never expected it to be so quick, with Tetsurou. He doesn't know how he feels, actually, knowing that the number has changed. It doesn't get him any closer to understanding whether the last text he ever sent to Tetsurou (and the first one after they broke up) was ignored on purpose, or because Tetsurou had already changed his number (without informing Kei) by then.

Neither one is very pleasant to think about, actually, but three years after a perfectly cordial and friendly breakup is not when he's going to busy his mind with such thoughts. It's not even too late; it's just so well past that time that there's no point to it.

'Let's do this,' Kei says, more for his own benefit than Vladimir's but he'll never admit that. (After all, he never changed  _his_ number. Not because— well, he doesn't know why not. But he's petulant and wants a moral edge more sophisticated than  _your cat teleported into my apartment,_ so he'll take what he can get.)

As the ringer buzzes, he wonders what it must sound like on the other end. Will it sound like wind chimes the way it used to, when he would call Tetsurou from the kitchen to the living room to pass him a book that was just out of his reach? Or like birds chirping first thing in the morning, or just that boring, generic ring, one that means the person calling doesn’t really want to be calling. Before he can get too caught up, though, Tetsurou receives the call, and suddenly Kei has to deal with hearing his voice again, something that he didn't realise he'd have to do until he's doing it without warning.

‘Hello?’ Tetsurou's voice sounds so painfully the same that for a moment nothing in the world is all right. He's disoriented and tired and still wishing this will just end up being a long, horribly realistic dreams, like the ones he sometimes has about roaming in the city past midnight when all the lights are blue. 'Hi, do you hear me? I can't seem to hear you.'

Kei swallows. Takes a breath. There’s a greenstorm in his chest, and whatever remains of their connection must have transferred its drumming across the line, because Kei feels the phone in his hand grow ice-cold, the way hands do when realisation hits.

‘…Kei?’

He exhales in a  _whoosh_  and tightens his grip on the phone. ‘Hey.’

‘Hey, uh. Hi.' A horrible, long, long pause. 'What’s up.’

‘Okay, this is going to sound ridiculous, but…’

 

☀︎

 

If Oikawa’s scrying them right now, he must be laughing his ass off. The sight is too ridiculous for even Kei to hide his smile, albeit one that's a little hysterical. It is, after all, seven in the morning, and Kuroo Tetsurou is now standing in his living room accompanied by his immortal cat that teleported here with neither rhyme nor reason, and Kei is still in his pyjamas.

‘Run that by me again,’ Tetsurou says to Vladimir, in that stern voice that means  _I know you’re immortal but I will really kill you_. ‘You wanted food, so instead of summoning the tuna from the fridge, you decided to break into Tsukishima’s household. Because you're a nuisance to civilised society and only exist to make my life miserable, eternally.’

Vladimir stares blankly at Tetsurou for a long, long time. He’s defiant in the way only an immortal cat can be.  _You literally can't kill me, and if you could, you wouldn't._

Kei, too, stares at Tetsurou a little. He doesn’t look all that different, except for the glasses, which are new. They sit perfectly on his nose without stems, silver-rimmed and sleek, and he looks as heart-twingingly handsome as ever. The slightest hint of shadow, hair as unreasonable as it used to be, the collar of his shirt rumpled now that Kei’s never around to fix it. In a way he looks exactly like Kei thought he would, and in a way he doesn’t look like that at all. It’s been hard, after all, to avoid each other when they run in the same circles, the same city, but they’ve managed— this is the first time they’re actually talking to each other outside of a polite capacity. He's— God, he's  _twenty-eight_ now, and while three years seem like nothing put on paper all by themselves, their magnitude seems to amplify when put in context like this. Tetsurou has a research position, Kei knows, something well-paying but nowhere near what he originally planned to do with his life, but then again,  _this_ wasn't what either of them had planned to do originally with life either. Nothing ever is, after all, and now they're here on the wrong side of moonfall and Tetsurou is stupid beautiful, and Kei hadn't realised how difficult it would be to not just reach out and clutch at him like a lifeline.

Kei’s missed him, so much, after all. Him and his stupid cat.

‘If he’s still hungry,’ he says, ‘I do have tuna in the fridge.’ He doesn’t add that he never really got out of the habit of keeping some, because Tetsurou already knows that.

Tetsurou looks up finally, and at Kei. He hasn’t, not once, since he arrived— greeting Kei with his eyes focused on a spot behind his shoulder, moving straight to chastise Vladimir. Now, he looks at Kei, and his throat works visibly, an unnameable wind shifting his features into an unnameable expression, just for a moment. And if Kei was shameless, he'd think that Tetsurou's missed him too, but he doesn't allow himself to.

‘You grew your hair out,’ Tetsurou says, and Kei can’t do anything but shrug. The silverbells at his windows tinkle all of a sudden; fermentation is done much, much ahead of schedule. He doesn't have it in him to be surprised.

 

☀︎

 

Tetsurou takes Vladimir home without letting him eat, and neither of them try to question, out loud at least, why any of this happened in the first place. There is only Vladimir, still staring at Kei over Tetsurou’s shoulder, with something a little too akin to disappointment.

 

**i. vladimir**

'WHAT IS THAT? IS THAT A  _CAT_?'

Koutarou's pretty sure he's never laughed so fucking hard in his life. Which, like, he's also pretty sure that he says that every day of his life, but whatever. It's all part of the gift of being best friends with Kuroo Tetsurou and Oikawa Tooru both. Every day is a new story to discover, etcetera, etcetera.

The current source of his nonstop, belly clutching, loud wheezing laughter is also a gift, albeit a new one: Tsukishima Kei, first year student of general alchemy, who, until about four hours ago, had actually managed to create and maintain a sophisticated first impression upon them, even looking down disdainfully and going  _no thank you, I do not participate in such activities_ when Tooru offered him some of that shady ass bamboo bottle liquor of his. Upon catching a whiff of the delicious scent that wafted out of the bottle when Tooru removed the glass stopper, however, Tsukishima rapidly changed his mind.

Which brings Koutarou back to the current source of his endless amusement: Tsukishima Kei, piss drunk on Tooru's edelweiss liquor, and meeting Tetsu's immortal cat for the first time.

'He is indeed a cat,' Tooru says grandly, raising a very visibly displeased Vladimir high in the air, Simba style. Vladimir hisses furiously, to Tooru's indifference. 'Behold this cat. His name is Vladimir. He's immortal.'

'WHAT? WHY IS HIS NAME VLADIMIR? I SWEAR I'M NOT YELLING.'

'Oh, we know,' Tetsu says. 'It's the edelweiss, don't worry.'

Vladimir, at that point, clearly having decided that he's done with Tooru's bullshit, starts to turn red, a clear indication that his fur is now at  _fuck_ temperature. Tooru curses and lets go of him, and Vladimir hovers indignantly in the air for a few seconds before descending— Koutarou's positively sobbing on the floor at this point— to pummel Tooru in the face with his paws.

'Welcome to university,' Tetsu's saying to Tsukishima in the background, while Koutarou tries not to throw his lunch up. 'Now you've seen an immortal cat punching a mathematician. Also, Bokuto's crush of the week is definitely a necromancer.'

'Akaashi is not a necromancer!' Koutarou says hotly, raising himself up on his elbows while Vladimir continues his red hot assault and Tooru shrieks. 'He just...has a very particular set of skills! And his major has a formal dress code! And—'

 

☾

 

So, as it turns out, Tetsu met Tsukishima in some bullshit conference about astrology, whatever. Koutarou forgets the details (although it was just this afternoon). Apparently Tsukishima asked to borrow a pen, and Tetsu actually had more than one pen on his person for once in his life, and the rest is history, as they say. Or, well, as Koutarou will say dramatically one day, if Tetsu and Tsukishima bang and like, get together or something. He kind of hopes they will: Tsukishima seems to be the kind of person who is the  _hilarious_ opposite of Tetsu's type, and vice versa. Anything that comes out of this can only be pure comedy. He doesn't even want Tooru to take a quick look into the next six months; some things are meant to be enjoyed along with the mystery. Worth being lived through like it's the first time, which it is.

He turns out to be right, even though it takes two months. When Tetsu announces that he finally needs to find that mysterious all-powerful gel that will keep his stupid hair down, Koutarou guesses on the first try that it's for a date, and on the second one that said date is with Tsukishima. Nothing beats Tetsu's smile and blush apart from the news, the next day, that Tsukishima's offered to concoct such a gel, tailored specifically to Tetsu's hair.

 _Then_ the rest is history.

It's worth being lived through like it's the first time. They're two months behind schedule as far as Koutarou is concerned, but he reminds himself that it's not exactly his life to live. No, Tsukishima ends up concocting an almighty gel and Tetsu uses it exactly once before screaming in horror at how dumb he looks with his hair down, and promptly puts the jar away in the top shelf of the medicine cabinet, never to pull it out again. But then, that first date turns into a second one, and a third one. Tsukishima turns into Tsukki and Tetsu stays Tetsu, but happier and happier. A bounce to his step, this different kind of smile that Koutarou's never seen on him before.

Koutarou's there for all those firsts. The first date, the first kiss, the first time. Tooru laughs at him for it, but it becomes a constant in his life, outside his life. Something to keep him grounded and believing when his birds refuse to listen and his grades are plunging like they do for that one month every year and it seems like nothing at all is going his way, it is suddenly as precious to Koutarou as it must be to the two of  _them._ All the more when Tetsu walks in one night with snow in his hair and lights in his eyes, and hauls Koutarou out of his chair to spin him around his tiny room in circles, all the while refusing to explain himself. That's the day Koutarou tells himself that he has to get his own shit together, and finally sends that text to Akaashi that's been lying in his drafts for months.

Then the rest is history, and it keeps going, and when that six month mark comes around, he doesn't even need to ask Tooru to look six months further into the future. He knows what's going to happen anyway, and it looks good. It looks so fucking good.

 

** 2\. love is a dream someone else had last night.  **

The hoodie is one that might as well have belonged to him for how it was in his wardrobe and on his shoulders most of the time they were together. It's not the very first thing he ever borrowed from Tetsurou; that would be the pen that started their entire story, asked for hurriedly in a conference that they were both attending and that Kei was evidently ill-prepared for, having forgotten his entire pouch of stationery. Sure, he could've summoned his supplies from wherever, he was already advanced enough back then, but it was just easier to lean over and ask the wild-haired neighbour instead.

No, the hoodie's far from the first thing Kei ever borrowed from him, but it's the one that he kept the longest. Even now, as he stares down aimlessly at where it's draped across the back of his chair as if it had never left, he can instantly recognise every single stain on it. The one that constantly changes colours near the right pocket, the iridescent streak down the center of the back, the splatters of a formula so potent that it still smells like the sea and always will, as long as its alchemist lives, and maybe even beyond that. A moment of pure, unwarned-for happiness, suspended forever.

To find that scent filling the kitchen on a dark Tuesday morning is, to say the least, stunning. He knows that smell is the strongest sense, capable of taking you back to a certain moment so vividly that you might as well be reliving it physically, but he doesn't know whether it's power is diluted or magnified by the fact that this moment is not one that lasted a few seconds or minutes, but years. That it wasn’t really so much a moment as a— a— a different life altogether, one where he looked at the world so differently and had confident ideas about who he was and what he could do with his time here. Using his potions to paint the walls, sometimes, spilling lavender ink on Tetsurou’s pillow and laughing at his complaints.

The thrum of magic is constant in everyone it touches, in the sense that by itself, it will never multiply, or strengthen, or weaken— no one person is more gifted than another; it’s a talent to cultivate like any other. But there are things that can help, or harm: the same things that help or harm any other aspect of their lives— pain, and joy, and love. Kei is as far from being a believer as he is from being a cynic, but there are facts that can’t be denied. The way his potions always turned out better, easier, more potent back then. How his skin had a different glow that even he noticed; how his mood detecting vials would always remain in shades of rose and purple. He has enough confidence in his ability and work ethic to know that he still produces quality, but it’s not the same. When you’ve experienced things going your way every day, it’s hard to return to the system of hard work, manual labour, sheer emotionless effort.

For example, he’s never managed to mix that sea foam formula again, which is perhaps why his grip on this old, worn hoodie is so tight that his knuckles are turning white with it.

He doesn’t know if Tetsurou’s been wearing it; can’t detect his scent on the fabric. Doesn’t know where he’s been keeping it either, because there are no ironed creases, no careless folds. For all Kei knows, this could’ve been hanging in the doorway for three years, something Tetsurou never quite managed to put away. It could’ve been lying at Bokuto’s place along with the other things Tetsurou dumped there in the first few months, claiming he couldn’t stand the sight of them just lying around untouched. (Kei only knows this because Bokuto’s a talkative drunk, all the more when it concerns things like these which he genuinely thinks he can change by intervening. Akaashi, at least, knows better than that, and has never once commented on any aspect of Kei's life unless Kei specifically asked him to. Sometimes, though, he wonders if he'd rather it was different— rather that someone, anyone, had managed to stop him in time.)

It’s three in the afternoon, and he realises that this can’t be a coincidence. But then again, Tetsurou would never joke with him like this, not after everything, and Kei doesn’t know where he lives; couldn’t have summoned this by accident no matter how much he’s been thinking about Tetsurou since last week, when Vladimir showed up. No, this is…neither a coincidence, nor the opposite of one. It’s something that he can’t put his finger on, can’t really begin to understand since it’s only happened twice. Catches himself before he can add  _so far,_ or fully admit the note of hope that came along with that thought. This isn't a joke, not on either end of things, and he should remember that.

‘Sometimes lines just cross,’ Tadashi replies, when Kei calls him a little frantically. ‘Don’t think too much about it, Tsukki. It’s moonfall, and you know everything changes during moonfall.’

‘It does,’ Kei concedes. ‘I just wish it hadn’t decided to personally fuck with me.’

‘Well, fuck back, I don’t know. Just don’t get yourself hurt.’

‘How would I? I’m the one who left.’

 

☀︎

 

 _Hey. Sorry to disturb you again, but_ ~~ _my_~~ _your hoodie is at my place._ →

 _The stained one._ →

 

→ _It’s at yours?! Okay, good_

→ _Can I come by later today to get it?_

→ _Unless you want to keep it_

 

 _I’m home in the evening._ →

 

☀︎

 

‘This is bizarre,’ Tetsurou says bluntly, once he’s put the hoodie away in his bag. ‘Can I sit? We should figure this out.’

‘Sure,’ Kei says, and to the satisfaction of his ego he doesn’t sound as hurt as he feels. He doesn’t even feel all that hurt, actually; he doesn’t know what he was expecting. It’s not like he has the right to expect Tetsurou to be as warm as he used to be, not after Kei ended a five-year relationship in the space of a month. (Not that Tetsurou didn’t agree, back then; but sometimes two people aren’t at the same train station at the right time. Not that Kei ever fell out of love with Tetsurou; sometimes two people are on the same train but in different cars.) Tetsurou has the right not to look Kei in the eye anymore. Kei just wishes he had the right to feel completely the sadness that prods at him at the sight. ‘Uh. Can I get you something?’

‘No, I’m good, thanks.’

They agree that whatever it is that’s going on is not normal. They agree, also, that it can range from mildly to severely inconvenient for both of them if they let it go on for too long. They agree that it should be nipped in the bud, and Tetsurou doesn’t even make a breakup joke about any of it. Kei supposes that he doesn’t deserve to be joked around with anymore. He also supposes that he doesn't deserve to ask how Tetsurou noticed the hoodie was missing so quickly, doesn't deserve to know where it was. He so desperately wants to keep it, but as it is, it only tells his side of the story; he still can't find a single trace of Tetsurou's scent on it. (He doesn't want only half a memory. No one deserves  _that,_ not even him.)

Outside, the sky has been orange for forty-three minutes out of its scheduled forty-five during this time of the year, and he can see the periwinkle coming in in pulses on the insides of the clouds. Soon it will diffuse over the warm shades of the sunset in blurring spirals, and once the first shooting star has led the way, the rest will come out in fits and bursts. Moonfall has always been strange.

‘I’m going to see with Tooru about getting some wards set around my place,’ Tetsurou is saying, when Kei turns away from the window and back to the conversation. He hasn’t noticed that Kei wasn’t looking; he isn’t, either. ‘Maybe look into it for here too? You can just use a binding potion, right?’

‘I’ll try,’ Kei replies, another not-quite-negligible pang in his throat. Wards and potions, yeah, because that's what all of this has come to. None of this, actually, was meant to come to  _anything_. There's a reason neither of them knows where the other lives, and that reason is that this was never fucking supposed to happen. They were supposed to carry on loving each other from afar in peace. ‘I don’t know if it’ll work, though. My potions, well. They know you.’

Tetsurou laughs drily, not bothering to hide the tone. ‘Yeah, I bet.’

 

☀︎

 

It’s late enough by the time he leaves that Kei should really, really ask him to stay for dinner, but that’s out of the question for both of them. The sky is now indigo, the lightest it will be before the moon finally comes out, and his stormglass is telling him that the temperature has taken a swan dive into what might as well be bluewinter. Tetsurou should really put the hoodie on before stepping outside, but of course he doesn’t. He's never liked admitting he's cold, after all, and Kei can't see why that would've changed over the years, least of all in front of him.

He does, however, hesitate in the doorway while slipping his shoes on. Stares at a spot on the floor and asks again.

‘Sure you don’t want to keep it? I know you liked it a lot.’

Kei bites his lip and stares at the same spot; it glows red under their scrutiny, shy, or offended. ‘It was yours in the first place.’

It’s only when the wood starts to smoke a little that they both avert their gazes; Kei to Tetsurou, Tetsurou at that little ghost behind Kei’s shoulder that only he can see. Neither says anything, until that single moment where the sky turns from blue to black and the light of the moon splits all the clouds into smoke.

Then Tetsurou shrugs and hauls his bag a little higher over his shoulder, adjusts his glasses that don’t need adjusting.

‘See you,’ he says, without any real conviction. Then he’s closing the door, then he’s gone.

 

☀︎

 

Kei is oh so cold that night. His fingers are freezing and his legs ache, and he wonders how hard Tetsurou's shivering in his bed. Tries to remember and remind that he was warm just before.

 

**ii. hoodie**

Tadashi's heart is altogether too easy to win, according to Tsukki. When they were younger and Tsukki was a touch more juvenile than he is now, sometimes he'd end up being a little unkind to Tadashi about it, scornful as if loving too easily was a fault, a weakness. Maybe there's still a part of Tsukki that thinks that way, but it only makes Tadashi all the more proud of where he is today, despite that nature of his. It can't be easy, after all, fighting your instinct every day in order to live your life the way it should be lived; fighting your inner litany that doesn't want you to feel happy, feel alive in that way that's possible only if you risk it all.

He's aware that those are hardly the thoughts he should be entertaining at seven in the evening when he has a model due at midnight and the professor is fully the type to send barrages of paper planes to his household with  _gentle reminders_ that he's fifteen seconds past his deadline, but he can't help it— Tsukki has been smiling down at the hoodie in his lap for three whole minutes now. His glasses— that he refuses to change— are slipping down the bridge of his nose and barely staying on given the angle of his gaze, but he doesn't seem to be aware of it. His pale cheeks are flushed despite the chill of moonfall; he seems to be in a world of his own. It seems to be a perfect world.

The hoodie doesn't look very extraordinary. Thick and dark grey, some strange sea smell coming off it in...well, waves. Nothing that warrants the look of absolute adoration that Tsukki is giving it, but that's exactly what Tadashi's so happy about. If this was just a little while ago— a couple of years, maybe three— and their roles had been reversed, Tsukki would've been scoffing, then glowered, displeased, in everyone's general direction, when Tadashi got his heart broken for the fifth time. (It isn't for nothing that Tsukki doesn't like when Tadashi falls in love, after all. It's his own little way of caring for him, one that Tadashi has learned to appreciate.)

As it is, this isn't three years ago; this is one year since— since nothing at all changed, along with everything. And their roles aren't reversed; they are as they are: Tsukki in love without saying it out loud, and Tadashi laughing into his own hand, sprawled out on the bed and surrounded by humming wood.

'I'm guessing you had a good anniversary?' he asks mildly, and Tsukki jumps, literally throws the hoodie to the floor. Ignoring Tadashi's gleeful laughter, he turns back to his laptop, and makes a frustrated sound when it automatically opens his music and starts playing some disgustingly cheesy number. 'Oh my God, this is the best day of my life.'

'Shut up,' Tsukki says. 'Finish your project and mind your own business.' But even the back of his neck is red, and after a second he buries his face into his hands, groans theatrically. 'Fine, shut up. We, uh. God, I hate this.'

'Did the do? The whoopie-whoo? The s—'

'Tadashi,  _I swear to God._ Also, yes, and we shall never, ever,  _ever_ speak of this again or I will tell Yachi about that time you ate three pizzas in one evening.'

Tadashi laughs once more— and loudly— for good measure and turns back to his models, and discovers— to his horror— that his tools have hidden themselves again. Sighing and resigning himself to his fate of grovelling at his professor's feet come midnight, he slips off the bed to check under it, restoring Tsukki's precious hoodie to the wardrobe with a flick of his hand.

 

☾

 

He might always have been the one to fall in love too quickly, and he will never agree that anything is wrong about that. But seeing the slower, more careful ones spend years planning their love down to the last detail and then flail in mid-air as they're pushed off the cliff with no prelude is a sight of its own.

 

** 3\. i used to say i missed you after just a weekend. like a child learning how to talk, who calls every cat a tiger.  **

Moonfall is strange. It’s a time of change, complete and fast like the blink of the eye that shifts you from a dream to reality, leaving you no time to realise which is which and gather your bearings. The world turns its cloak inside out, the leaves on every tree turning silver for only one evening before curling in on themselves and falling to the ground like shavings.

 

☀︎

 

By the third time, Kei's already made up his mind that he'll just send back whatever the hell it is that managed to zap its way into his side of the city, so that neither he nor Tetsurou have to deal with whatever those first two meetings were, ever again. And so, when one evening his pen stand and two scrolls are knocked clean off his desk by the presence of an ugly, heavy, all too familiar laptop and two of Tetsurou's favourite notebooks, he just pinches the bridge of his nose, sighs probably his twentieth sigh of the day (the hydrangeas are misbehaving) and simply splays a hand over the items, willing them back to their original location.  _Go back home._

Three minutes later, his phone is ringing its head off, the beeping nothing like his usual ringtone, shrill to indicate a maximum urgency level. Kei jumps a little and receives the call without taking the time to look at the number.

'Kei!' Tetsurou's voice sounds about as urgent as the beeping. 'Was my shit at your place again? The—'

'Laptop, yes,' Kei replies. 'I can't believe you still have that old thing, by the way—'

'Never mind that.' Kei raises an eyebrow. 'The report I was working on has been clean erased. Just, no trace of it anywhere on the drive, and I can't restore it.'

'Oh.' All right, that explains the beeping. A second passes, and Kei realises the implications of what Tetsurou just said, and straightens up so fast in his chair that he hears his neck crack a little. 'Wait. Shit, I'm sorry, I'm the one who sent them back. Do you think—?'

'Yeah,' Tetsurou replies. 'Can I try something? I'm just gonna send them to your place again, can you check if the data's back? It's a study on—'

'Familiar psychology, yeah,' Kei mutters absently, clearing space on his desk again to prepare for the arrival. 'Bokuto mentioned it last time.'

There's a beat of silence during which he wonders if he shouldn't have said anything at all, but then, without a sound, Tetsurou's laptop and notebooks are back on his table. Kei immediately opens the lid and waits for the screen to load, then huffs as he sees that it's locked. Tetsurou's old administrator display picture blinks up at him, a blurry shot of Vladimir taken years ago by Bokuto.

'Password?' Kei asks, a little dumbly, freezing up the moment he realises what he's just done. There's a thousand other ways this could be done, Tetsurou could type it out from his apartment, or just disable the password, anything— but now Kei's asked the stupid question and he's too nervous to speak again. His heart is pounding with a disproportionate energy.

The silence continues, long enough that Kei thinks there's a problem on the line, but then Tetsurou's voice filters through, quiet.

'Zero three,' he says, and Kei already knows what's coming, doesn't allow the feeling to hit him; just draws the laptop towards himself and types quickly with numbing fingers. 'One one, one seven.'

He won't comment on it. He should just let it pass, just focus on what he's doing, don't make this awkward, no need to make this awkward. Regardless of the years between them now, Tetsurou is still Tetsurou, in a way that Kei may no longer understand the current mechanics of, but whose reasoning he will never unlearn. This will be fine. It doesn't matter that on this day, eight years ago, Kei asked him for a pen. It's fine. It doesn't matter that if he hadn't walked out the day he did, they could be slowly approaching a decade of being  _together_ in love, doesn't matter that he only realised later how long it takes to build something that old and familiar. Doesn't matter.

The report is on the desktop, three thousand and fourteen words on some obscure branch of familiar psychology that only someone like Tetsurou could make head or tail of. Kei feels some misplaced pride before coming to his senses, and clears his throat.

'It's here,' he says, then takes a quick, harsh breath, speaks before he can change his mind. 'Look— don't get me wrong. I just don't want to risk you losing it again if I send it back. Do you want to just—?'

Tetsurou hesitates; Kei's phone fluctuates in temperatures thrice. ‘It’s one in the morning, you know.’

‘If you thought I’d stopped being nocturnal, you’d never have called.’

 

☀︎

 

The silence is— well, not deafening. But muffling, a little suffocating, in that horrid way that it is between two people who once couldn’t stop talking about anything and everything in the whole wide world. Kei remembers talking as enthusiastically about zombie apocalypse contingency plans as about the earthside chemical aspects of alchemy, and how boring it is to actually have to study Buckminsterfullerenes before one can advance to making magical potions. Remembers Tetsurou chattering back nineteen to the dozen too.

The only light in the room comes from Kei’s reading lanterns, having positioned themselves perfectly to help him and Tetsurou work. His is adjusted to a colder temperature to help him identify colours better; Tetsurou’s is warm and yellow, as cosy-looking as it used to be back when they did this together every night.

The silence, for all that it's devastating, isn’t actually all that  _awkward_ , he supposes. Apart from the fact of it existing where it once didn’t, nothing’s unusual about it. Tetsurou’s completely focused on his work, the constant film of silver ghosting over his quickly typing fingers a testament to his concentration. He hasn’t really looked up from his screen since he settled down with it, after greeting Kei and passing him a bottle of his favourite commercial cold brew, half in apology, half in thanks. Vladimir is curled up next to him, too. (Kei, that is, not Tetsurou. Kei supposes immortal cats don’t really care about ego and the likes.)

It’s only once he’s set up the two-sided mirror that he needs for his brewing, that he allows himself to really look at Tetsurou. Face lit up in the mixed glow of his screen and the lantern, those two lines between his forehead that mean that he’s reading tiny text without remembering to zoom in, the occasional sigh. Kei waves a hand to slow down the fermentation of his brew even though he knows that he’ll have to do it all over again, and instead stares shamelessly at Tetsurou’s profile, protected by the silver panel in front of him. God, but he's so  _handsome,_ in a way it's like Kei's forgotten him in all the right ways; Tetsurou's scent has yet to fade from his senses, but the sight of him is like being hit in the face with the spray from a waterfall all over again, with added weight this time when Kei knows how the brain behind that beautiful face works.

The thing is, he doesn’t think even Tetsurou believed for a single second that Kei had stopped loving him. Not when Kei said  _we need to talk_  like so many others in the city must have been doing at the same moment. Not when Kei leaned in for one last kiss and ignored how cold Tetsurou’s lips had gone. Not even, he thinks, when he took the last of his things and said goodbye at the doorstep with a cordial smile.

Tetsurou’s too smart to delude himself into thinking Kei never loved him, or that he stopped. And he’s smart enough to know that it wasn’t about falling out of love; it was choosing something else over a love that would only hold them back.

From being better versions of themselves; the best they could possibly be. From strengthening their magic on their own, not through the force of their intertwined hands.

‘Fuck everything,’ Kei says, always gifted at summarising a situation. Vladimir, in total agreement, dips a paw into his potion and presses it on the mirror, promptly dissolving it. He panics briefly. ‘ _Vladimir_ , you useless feline.’

Then Tetsurou laughs, just a little, finally looking up from his screen after almost two hours of nonstop work.

‘What did you expect?’ he says, amusement softening his features and sharpening his voice. ‘He’s actually been bored all these years without anyone to annoy. Koutarou’s screaming gets tiring after a while.’

Kei snorts despite himself. ‘I mean, three years is probably the equivalent of three minutes to Vladimir, but I get what you mean.’

‘Well, I wish I was Vladimir then.’

In the silence that follows, the gentle sound of Kei’s potion undoing itself is on the wrong side of  _too loud_. It hisses and bubbles like heated water, fumes disappearing before they can rise an inch above the surface, while Kei blinks quickly and looks down at the rim of his flask, the dropper that he placed beside it, the textbook still floating in mid-air.

He wants to say  _don’t we all_. He wants to say  _I’m sorry, though I didn’t do anything wrong, just something hurtful and painful and— maybe I did something wrong_. He also wants to say  _those glasses look really good on you_.

He says, ‘Coffee run?’

 

☀︎

 

Moonfall is a time of change. It’s ironic, then, that the things that have stayed the same are the ones to haunt him.

 _Coffee run_  has always been their code for  _I’m tired of this bullshit work, let’s go get some air even though alchemists make better coffee in their sleep than baristas could in a decade_. When Tetsurou perks visibly at the mention, Kei can’t help his own smile, and before he knows it they’re pulling their boots and scarves on— snow’s coming in twenty-four minutes, say the crystals in his stormglass— racing each other to the front door while Vladimir, king of the kitchen now, sits and watches them lazily from the top of the refrigerator.

It’s something past three in the morning, and the city is alive like it is at no other time of the day.  _Nocturnal_  loses its special meaning when half the population falls into the same category biologically; only a few cafés and shops are closed, the rest open, lit blue to keep their less loyal customers awake. The trees are preparing to turn silver, Kei can see it with his vision that permits him to scan the chlorophyll in the leaves. It’s pulsing and glowing brighter second by second, then changing its mind and turning back to purple. There are no cars out on the road they've chosen to take, which is just the way they like it.

Tetsurou is walking with his eyes closed, using those heightened senses of his to follow Kei’s scent and footsteps. It was always one of his favourite things to do; practically nap on the way to their favourite coffee shop, drink three vials of a brew so revolting that Kei has willingly blocked everything related to it out of his memory, and then race Kei on the way back to the apartment to shake off the excess energy.

Tonight is no different, although it’s been so long since they last did this. The city is blue and cold in the  _wake up, wake up_  refreshing way, the high notes of buskers on their electric guitars following them down wide avenues and narrow streets, the chatter of patrons a soothing reminder that they’re not alone in what can feel like a terribly lonely time of the year. The tip of Kei’s nose has gone cold and numb, and he knows Tetsurou forgot to put on gloves, because there’s no unlearning him.

Their shop is just opening up, the only one bold enough to go neon pink in a sea of blues. If Shimizu is shocked to see them come in together after all these years, she doesn’t show it, only nods at them as if the last time they were in was a week ago, and clears the stacked glassware on their favourite seats with a wave of her hand. Kei can hear Sugawara singing to his plants in the kitchen, something about holding their home when everything else is fleeing. (The only time Kei has ever appreciated his mandatory middle school ancient tongue classes is when he’s in the company of botanists or astronomers.)

‘The usual?’ Shimizu asks, grey eyes sharp over the baby pink rims of her glasses. Kei takes a moment to smile fondly at their cat-ear points, then clears his throat, nods. Turns to Tetsurou to ask and finds him still sleeping, turns back to Shimizu and shrugs.

‘For him, too,’ he says. She looks at him a second too long, then turns to her machines without a word.

He only wakes Tetsurou when his vials are ready, not daring to do more than pat his shoulder twice. Tetsurou jerks awake and blinks at Kei, and all activity around them freezes for a moment.

Kei knows Tetsurou isn’t fully conscious yet, because only in a dream could he look at Kei with so much unbridled happiness. Only in a dream would he give Kei a smile so peaceful that it’s heart-wrenching, only in a—

‘Tsukishima!’ Kei starts and turns back to the bar, and to his relief— not disappointment, no— Sugawara is standing in the doorway of the kitchen, beaming at him, all his beauty spots glowing bright like they do at this time of the year. ‘The wisteria told me you were coming!’

‘Yeah,’ he replies faintly. ‘Hello. It’s been a while.’

When he turns back to Tetsurou, he’s closed himself off already. Eyes cold as granite, jaw tight.

 

☀︎

 

They don’t race back to the apartment. Instead, Kei walks a little behind Tetsurou, whose speed is as restless as it must be tiring. The lights are changing to green now to accommodate the fourth hour, and the snow’s started coming down heavy now, not melting on Kei’s gloves when it lands. When they round the corner and come to his building, for a moment, nostalgia strikes. The single yellow light above the front door, Tetsurou’s tall form in the middle of the night. Kei has often wondered, in these past years, just how he had the courage to let something so beautiful go, but it has always been that very beauty that consoled him. Reminded him that he’s done this for a reason.

See, having everything go your way is amazing until you realise that it can be taken away in a second. That it’s dependent on the presence of another person; that this strength is not your own. Something Kei never really managed to keep his peace with.

But— there’s the stinging, smarting reminder again: those little silverbells just outside his windowsill are tinkling, which can only mean that the potion— that he abandoned halfway— has somehow prepared itself. He doesn’t need to check it to know it’s going to be perfect, no need to add rosemary, no need to siphon away extra smoke. He also doesn’t need to inspect too much to know why that is.

Frustration wells, and under it, something almost like desperation. Standing under the doorway of a building Tetsurou was never supposed to know the location of, Kei feels, actually, a surge of anger. Tamps it down as quickly as it came, and reaches into his pocket to get the keys.

Then Tetsurou curses softly and Kei turns just in time to see him flexing his hands, and before either of them even knows it, Kei’s striding towards him and taking his hands in his own gloved ones, shaking his head and blowing into them.

‘Old habits die hard, huh,’ Kei says, trying to sound chiding but only sounding miserable. He blows on Tetsurou’s fingertips and squeezes them, rubs the centres of his palms. ‘You—’

‘Old habits die hard,’ Tetsurou repeats, and that’s when Kei actually realises what he’s doing. Pauses with his lips an inch away from the back of Tetsurou’s hand, eyes wide, heart pounding all of a sudden.

There’s no unlearning him, after all. Only leaving him.

Kei lets his hands go slowly, steps back. Looks determinedly at the snow gathering around their feet, as the sound of some far-off guitar floats towards them.

‘Your potion is ready,’ Tetsurou says.  _We work better together._  And this time, when Kei surges forward and grabs his collar, it’s deliberate. He only hopes he looks as livid as he feels, because Tetsurou has this horrible, triumphant smile on his face, tipping his head back towards the sky even as Kei glares at him soundlessly. ‘What? Hate the game, not the player.’

Kei wants to kiss him, which is the worst thing that’s happened all evening. So he lets go of him, lets him stumble back slightly, and turns away to the blue-green snow.

 

☀︎

 

The potion  _is_ ready, against all logic. That's what magic means at the end of the day, he thinks, a bitter taste in his mouth that has nothing to do with the coffee he drank earlier. But if he wanted to get the reins on his magic back then, he still wants to now; stubborn and vicious and smarting all over his heart, he takes every single vial and smashes it methodically into the kitchen sink. Ignores the fumes from the dissolving glass and slams the door on his way to bed.

 

**iii. laptop**

Tooru can see into the future. He has never told another living person just how far he can do it, not his own mother, and he'll never tell his lover, who is currently an apprentice, learning to be a sword forger, and blissfully unaware of Tooru's existence. (He's blisteringly handsome, loud, and strong.)

He can't see into the past; can never know for sure why things are the way they are right now, what makes the people around him who they are. But for that he has honed his human perceptiveness, and more often than not his educated guesses are on par with his clairvoyance.

That's the thing, though— Tooru is a clairvoyant, not a telepath. A surprising number of people don't get the difference between the two, which is frustrating because that very difference is what changes the gift from amusing to terrible. He can be as perceptive as he wants, and he can stay up nights anticipating problems before they become problems, trying to imagine a thousand ways that something could go wrong so that the day he dreams about it going wrong, he has a hypothesis to apply behind the result— but nothing, no amount of planning and plotting and overthinking will ever beat that first sinking feeling of dismay like a pit in his stomach, when he sees that something beautiful is going to dive south.

Tonight, he's staying over at Tetsurou and Tsukishima's place while pest control clears his apartment of the monarch butterflies that cloudspring brought with it. (One managed to sneak out with him, but he quickly lured it into a cherry tree with a well-placed lantern. If he never sees another pair of blue wings in his life again, it'll be too soon. He's almost too afraid to check if he actually will.) It would be warm and stuffy if Tsukishima wasn't working with some sort of literal glacier that's been hanging above his test tubes for a good three hours now, utterly beyond Tooru's understanding, clairvoyant or not. He's in the last leg of his thesis now, as is Tetsurou; it shows in how they're both glued to their work with no regard for Tooru, not even instructions on where to find the extra bedding. That's what family means, though, and Tooru can always steal their pillows at night.

What he's more interested by is...just them. Tonight, young and busy with great ideas about what to do with life, they look like porcelain. Tooru will never be able to unsee the future he has seen for them, and the only thing worse than the hole that has opened up in his stomach since this morning when he saw it, is the fact that he is never, ever allowed to change it. Has passed his entire life lying to people about the futures he sees, deliberately sidestepping questions, only giving the vaguest of answers that could never touch an outcome. But nothing can stop him from ruminating over it in his own head, and truly nothing beats the nightmare of being in the here and now and knowing that it's— not an illusion, not really, but a fickle reality.

They look like porcelain; he knows what is waiting for them. And to his teeth-gritting anguish, he doesn't know  _why._

When Tsukishima straightens up in his seat, Tooru quickly looks down to his laptop, pretending to be engrossed in his work. Watches from the corner of his eye as Tsukishima walks over to where Tetsurou's hunched over his own ancient stone slab of a computer, keeps watching as they talk in soft murmurs that only they can hear. Tsukishima's hands gentle on Tetsurou's shoulders, Tetsurou's hands around his wrists. A kiss on Tetsurou's unruly hair, a tiny laugh. They're in their own bubble of dreams. It probably looks like diamond to them, the same diamond that Tetsurou's going to pick out three months from now.

He keeps watching, and tries desperately to turn off the stained screen on the inner walls of his mind. Tries desperately to filter and drown out the images of them, not six months from now, with everything they had built together coming down around them. The first night Tsukishima will sleep on his own, after freezing in place on a bluewinter morning. The first meal he will skip, the last time he will kiss Tetsurou goodnight and be confident with all his heart that they will see each other in the morning. The very last time Tetsurou will be cluelessly happy in anticipation, before he starts to catch onto Tsukishima's changing demeanor. The talk, on the living room couch at three in the afternoon. Tetsurou sitting in the same spot long after Tsukishima has gone back to their room, presumably to start packing. Tetsurou staring at his own hands, the silver-blue around them gone stone grey for the moment. Tsukishima, the first night apart, choking on his airless breath in Yamaguchi's spare bed, eyes wide and terrified. The world around them, dimming infinitesimally.

'Oikawa? Are you all right?'

He blinks and stiffens as he realises that the action dislodged a tear, that is now running down his face, too fast to reel back in.

'Yeah,' he says to Tsukishima, who only relaxes his concerned frown a little. 'Those little blue fuckers must've brought some pollen in with them or something. Bugs, am I right?'

Tsukishima smiles, a tiny warm smile. 'Sure. Bedding's under the living room couch.'

On some nights Tooru wants to flip his middle finger up at the whole wide world and live in a cave, where he never has to face love and disappointment again. But, like every single one of those nights so far, he fights against it and grits his teeth, and tells himself that even porcelain can someday be repaired.

 

** 4\. i want to learn to fight with knives. to hotwire cars. to cook for myself.  **

'Absolutely not,' Tadashi says, even as Yachi disregards him completely and continues to do what she was doing (adding chilli flakes to the sparkling cherries and vodka that Kei had prepared last night). 'Babe, stop. You know I can't take that stuff. Save some on the side for me, at least.'

'No can do,' Yachi says, so mellowly that Kei knows she's not even doing it on purpose; this is just the person Yachi is, something that Tadashi should've seen coming the first time she launched a mass revolution on campus against— Kei doesn't even remember what, actually, but it was really fucking glorious. 'Just do some shots or something.'

'I'm  _twenty-six._ I'm literally  _dead._ I can't do  _shots_ anymore, Hitoka. And you  _know_ Tsukki's cabinet is full of vile stuff—'

'Objection,' Kei calls out, without looking up from the coriander he's chopping. 'You have profited off that  _vile stuff_ for over ten years, don't talk shit about it just because your old man system can't take anymore of it.'

Once a month, by Yachi’s supreme ruling, the three of them get together for a home dinner, the real deal— drinks, desserts, three different main dishes. They’ve been doing it since the end of high school when Yachi moved away for university and could only come back once in a while. Eight years is enough to build tradition; Kei automatically crosses off the last weekend of every month— no appointments, no lectures, nothing.

It’s been a month, then; the last time they’d met up, at Tadashi’s and Yachi’s apartment, was just a day before Vladimir showed up at Kei’s. Honestly, it’s a little ridiculous how much can change in a month, but he knows that if he voiced this thought out to Tadashi, all he’d get in return is some high-handed prose about moonfall and tides and stars. (In retrospect,  _Kei_  should’ve seen this coming right from primary school, when Tadashi started going home with tottering piles of meteorology tomes and scrolls. Once in love with the weather, always in love with the weather.)

So he keeps his confused thoughts to himself and watches fondly as they bicker away in front of him, ever the married couple even though it’s only been a year. Not much has actually changed apart from the rings around their fingers, so at least Kei doesn’t have to deal with more than the occasional pang of— not jealousy, not quite envy either…just soft, childish pain that has nowhere to go but in circles around itself. It’s not as if he can say  _why not me_ , after all, when he sees Tadashi bloom clouds in his cupped hands to blow their rains in Yachi’s hair. No one else decided for him that he wouldn’t have this; it was he himself. Maybe that’s where the pain comes and goes; knowing that he had this once, and willingly let it go. (Let something so beautiful go.) Two parts nostalgia and one part the kind of awful determination that carries the tired but resilient forward in life, this mix hasn’t bothered him in a while. But tonight, remembering Tetsurou’s freezing hands in his, the smile on his face and the look in his eyes, everything is that much more difficult. It’s just that much more difficult to remember why he did anything, at all. Bothered to fall in love, made the effort to climb out of it.

He sees it as it happens, and would’ve burst out laughing if he wasn’t so occupied in his thoughts: just as Tadashi crouches by the oven to check on the vegetables, a— notebook, it seems— materialises a foot over his head and rotates there for a moment before falling right on him.

‘What the—‘ Tadashi catches the book by reflex and straightens up, curses again when his head hits the edge of the counter. Kei definitely laughs then, and Yachi comes in from the living room to check on what’s happening. ‘What the hell is this?’

‘I don’t know,’ Kei replies. ‘But I can hazard a guess and say it belongs to one Kuroo Tetsurou. And for once, he has good aim.’

Tadashi glares at him balefully, but Yachi bursts into laughter.

 

☀︎

 

It’s a recipe book, one that Tetsurou’s had since his own middle school years, back when he discovered that he loved cooking. He always used to joke that they were made for each other, with Kei’s natural gift for drinks; hosting the best dinners out of their group of friends, always bringing the best wine to others’ parties. The book is a never-ending one; on the surface it looks like it only has a hundred pages or so, but there’s always a fresh one if you need, and the only sign of its age is on the cover, which has long since faded from red to brown.

‘I actually know this book,’ Tadashi says, when they’ve settled down on the couch with the chopping. ‘Can we go to the soups section? I fucking  _love_  the smell of that chestnut soup recipe.’

‘Hang on, let me look at the desserts first,’ Kei says. ‘If my favourite desserts are still in there we should make something from it. He’s always had secret ingredients and shit—’

‘Is neither of you considering calling Kuroo and informing him that his book is here?’ Yachi looks up from her phone, eyebrows raised in that schoolteacher way of hers. ‘Poring over someone else’s work like a bunch of snoops—’

‘Later,’ Kei and Tadashi say simultaneously, returning to the recipes with glee when Yachi only rolls her eyes in response.

Kei flips through the pages, pausing occasionally to bask in the scent of an old, familiar meal. Steak, simple student-friendly ramen, Tetsurou’s take on spring rolls. It’s difficult for his ego to admit, but he doesn’t eat well as regularly as he used to when they lived together. There’s something, after all, about having someone who loves you so much that they’ll stock your fridge for you, leave plates of cut fruit on the kitchen counter when they go to class. He doesn’t hate himself, doesn’t neglect his health— but he can’t quite love himself like that either, the kind where he’s constantly thinking of ways to better his life.

Not since the last attempt backfired in his face, at least.

He finally stops when he comes to the desserts section, looks down at Tetsurou’s chicken scratch of a scrawl, barely discernible. Moves a thumb down the index until he comes to fruit tarts, and presses down until that page shows up. The fresh scent that hits him is as overwhelming as it is subtle, and he has to swallow and hold his breath for a second.

The date the recipe was added is in the right hand corner, sometime in the middle of his third year at university. There’s a light pink stain, raspberry sauce, he knows; he’s the one who spilled it over the page, screaming indignantly as Tetsurou caught him in a tickle fit.

He’s conscious of the deliberate silence around him as he reads through the recipe, but can’t bring himself to respond to it, even sarcastically. He moves a thumb lightly over where Tetsurou’s ballpoint pressed indents into the paper, mouthing along with the words he wrote. It's a little hard to believe that something can be so comforting and yet so alienating, at the same time, in the same moment. As much as he wants to bask in the memories of all those afternoons devising recipes and arguing over chopping styles in their changing kitchens— first cramped like any other student's, then the bright and spacious dream Kei never even knew he had of domesticity— they come with that constant ache that he's gotten used to now, over the past few weeks but also the past few years. The rose, bruising ache that reminds him that this is something he once had but that he no longer has, and something that he might never, ever have again. And yet he can't stop himself from poring over the recipe carefully, as if he might find something different, something new, if he just looks hard enough.

And then— it’s when he's moving over a particular line and makes it glow that he stops.

Hidden notes. Of course.

Despite every instinct telling him to avoid it, Kei presses further onto the line, and stares as shining pink words rise up in the air just over it. It's Tetsurou's handwriting, strokes materialising individually as if that younger, brighter version of him is writing them in this very moment.

 _Be careful, Kei’s allergic to kiwis and nutmeg_ , the pink strokes spell out, innocent of the knowledge of what they do in an instant to Kei.

He snaps the book shut and drops it on the coffee table like it’s burned him, which it might as well have. All at once what he’s doing hits him, and to his horror his eyes start to sting.  _Allergic to kiwis and nutmeg_. It’s nothing extraordinary; he’s the one who made Kuroo add this recipe, of course it’d be tailored to him— but all the same. All the same.

There’s something, after all, about loving someone so much that you can’t stand the thought of them not being the best version of themselves that they could be. Whether you’re around to see the rewards or not.

Kei stares at the book for long enough that Yachi takes it out of his sight. ‘I’ll have it sent back to him,’ she says quietly, and Kei ignores her.

But then Tadashi is reaching over and placing a hand on the nape of his neck, thumb rubbing his flushed skin.

‘Only two weeks of moonfall left,’ he says. ‘Make it out to the other side. One way or another.’

 

☀︎

 

→ _Got the book from Yachi. Thanks_

→ _And sorry for the trouble_

→ _Still trying to look for a solution to all this_

 

 _No, I'm sorry._ →

 _Tadashi misses your chestnut soup._ →

 _Sorry for not sending it back myself._ →

 

→ _I'll send him the recipe haha_

→ _Hey_

→ _Did you end up making the tarts?_

→ _Just curious, sorry_

 

~~_I don't think I can ever eat a tart in my life again_ ~~

~~_It would never be the same without you_ ~~

~~_I locked myself in their bathroom for half an hour_ ~~

_We had ice cream._ →

 

**iv. recipe book**

Keiji has a remarkable and pointed dislike of sweets. Consequently, about half of these dinners that he and Koutarou have with Kuroo and Tsukishima end up in him reading something in the living room while the other three squabble over petty details. It allows him to relax a little, because despite what Tsukishima might like to think about his nature being similar to Keiji's, those similarities end on the surface of them both being calm at first glance. Tsukishima, the closer you get to him, grows a hotter and hotter fuse— all of which is to say that nearly five years into them all knowing each other, there is no easier combination to irritate him than that of Kuroo and Koutarou.

Keiji rolls his eyes at Vladimir, who rolls his own right back, when they hear the fifth  _then go cook your own dessert, see if I help_ from Koutarou's part. It's accompanied, of course, by a great stomping of feet, followed by Koutarou himself, the three tiny owlets he's taking care of this week holding onto his hair for dear life as he makes his way to the living room.

'I hate Tetsu,' Koutarou announces, settling down heavily into a floating armchair, dislodging one owlet who Vladimir catches expertly on the top of his own head, meowing angrily. 'Don't spoil them, Vladimir. I'm training them for greenstorms. Get your immortal paws off them.'

'You didn't hate me last week when I helped you put out that fire,' Kuroo calls from the kitchen, and Keiji raises an eyebrow and turns to face a now-terrified Koutarou. He's  _very_ interested in this fire, especially given that Koutarou has been mysteriously quiet these days, seemingly doing a good job of keeping out of trouble.  _Too_ good a job, it seems. 'Get your ass back here and help Kei with the kneading.'

 _What fire,_ Keiji mouths (he doesn't like to give Kuroo teasing fuel either; his and Koutarou's feuds can literally last for weeks).  _I will murder you._

 _Nothing,_ Koutarou mouths back, before taking off for the kitchen at record speed. The owlet still on Vladimir's head hoots pathetically and flutters its wings to no avail, so Vladimir takes pity on it and makes his way to the kitchen too. Keiji's left once more with his book, that he returns to gratefully, until the last member of their haphazard family (not counting Tooru, who is always present in spirit anyway, no matter which corner of the world he is currently in) comes to join him.

'I was expelled from the kitchen,' Tsukishima says, trying his best not to sound like he's sulking. Keiji smirks and closes his book. 'Apparently your boyfriend thinks allergies are  _contagious_ and if I sneeze too often the owlets are going to develop  _allergies._ Not a cold, mind you, which, I don't even know if birds can get colds—'

'They definitely cannot.' Four years with an animal whisperer will teach you these things.

'—but he skipped right over colds and went to  _allergies._ Because those owlets, who are learning how to fly through  _greenstorms,_ will one day peck into a kiwi and  _that_ will be their undoing.  _Kiwis._ Owls eat  _meat,_ not  _kiwis,_ Akaashi. Why do I have to deal with this sort of thing when all I want to do is eat a nice dessert and find a job that doesn't take two hours of commute, or doesn't have a no teleportation policy?'

'I am assuming you haven't gotten a lot of sleep,' Keiji says, instead of replying to any immediately relevant part of Tsukishima's tirade (it's rather difficult to find one, actually).

Tsukishima sighs. 'Can you tell? Starsummer's around the corner. Tetsurou  _snores._ '

 

☾

 

Months later, when the last of the three owls returns safely from the greenstorm up in the mountains, Keiji is the one to receive and reward him, gloved hand moving carefully through his feathers, stroking over his beak. Koutarou is downstairs hauling boxes of Kuroo's things into the living room, and Keiji pretends he can't hear him curse and kick the wall.

That night they sit on the floor and sort through the boxes, a hundred pictures and a thousand borrowed memories, and when Koutarou mutters something about finding Kuroo a new apartment, Keiji can only agree. Sometimes it's the best one can do. It's just the best one can do.

 

** 5\. such trivialities do not even register to me. i am a being of pure reason. love would only slow me down. **

On that one evening of the year when the leaves all turn silver like the moon, Kei reaches into his pocket and finds a ring.

 

☀︎

 

It bears mentioning that Kei has never lied to Tetsurou. It so happened that one day, on a bluewinter morning when ice crystals had infested their apartment and control services were yet to arrive, when they were working quietly— Tetsurou on his thesis, Kei on that one structure that he just couldn’t seem to emulate— he looked over and noticed that the silver sheen of focus on Tetsurou’s hands was turning blue.

He looked down at his own hands and noticed the changing colours of the lines of his palms— cyan, lavender, rose.

It so happened that in that one moment, Kei simultaneously realised the weight of their impact on each other, and that it had to be stopped before it was too late. It bears mentioning, then, that loving or unloving Tetsurou was never a part of the equation; it was never a variable. No, the love stayed where it was: it was up to them to change their positions and calculations in order to balance it out, and as Kei’s structure started to fall apart even under Vladimir’s watchful eye, he realised that there was only one way— out.

So after he said  _we need to talk_  like so many others in that same moment, after they sat down in their little living room that doubled as a kitchen, Kei didn’t say  _I don’t love you anymore_ , because that would’ve been a ridiculous lie. He said the truth instead, which was I _think we need to live outside of this_. Which was,  _I think we should split up, to be better at things. Life, and magic, and whatever_. Which was,  _I think I should really, really, really go_.

And Tetsurou, for his part, didn’t fight so much as he debated. Shooting back at Kei with his own ideas, his own arguments, as if they were discussing conspiracy theories and not their relationship. He remained calm, though Kei’d seen the tremble in his hand when he reached out to get water. When Kei said  _we’re growing dependent_ , he said  _we’re symbiotic, not dysfunctional_. When Kei said I _don’t want to lean on you to be better at my craft_ , he said  _if two is better than one, why stop?_

Then, when Kei said  _because if one of us leaves one day, the other will never be the same again_ , Tetsurou said nothing at all.

It is only in retrospect that Kei realises how absurd that reasoning was. How fucking stupid and myopic, to say  _I don’t like not knowing when this will end, so here, I’m ending it_. In retrospect, he thinks that’s why Tetsurou didn’t try to argue with that one, because it should’ve been clear as day that the only reply would be  _it’s too late for that, don’t you think?_  And it was clear as day that Kei didn’t understand that, not then, and the only thing that could possibly make him understand would be time and the change in his own magic.

Kei has had time. Kei has had magic. Kei, in fact, has had everything except the acceptance that should come with moonfall, when everything changes and settles into a better version of itself. Stories, and people, and love.

The ring is silver like the leaves outside. In the center of it sits a hollow diamond, filled with periwinkle glimmers that fly in an unknown breeze, their unfathomable edges lined with gold. Kei has never loved and hated something so much, with its fragile kind of beauty that can’t be let go, can only be contained in cupped hands and looked at through the spaces between your fingers.

Kei hates the ring and everything it stands for. Kei hates that they were on the same train, in the same car, and on the same station, but that it was one where he wasn’t supposed to step off and he did anyway. Kei hates Tetsurou for still being Tetsurou and never turning back into Kuroo and Kuroo-san and that wild-haired boy sitting next to him in a conference about the sun. Kei hates himself for remembering Tetsurou’s favourite colour and his favourite drink and the way he pronounces  _roof_  differently.

But what Kei hates most of all is that those glimmers have multiplied and escaped the ring anyway, flitting around the room with the kind of youthful, innocent joy that can only mean that their happiness was cut short so quickly, so brutally, that the soul of Tetsurou’s love for him is forever suspended inside that hollow diamond, the moment in which it was at its purest. That this doesn’t even have anything to do with their persons anymore; it is an existence of its own.

He stares at the little pinpricks of light around his room, waves a hand to douse every lantern. In their firefly glow he reaches behind him and comes up against a wall, slides down against it, folds his knees to his chest. There is silence.

There is silence on the phone, too, when he calls. No ringing, and he wonders again how it must sound on the other end. What could this sound like— what could prompt Tetsurou to ever receive a call from him again?

But then that familiar voice is saying  _hello_ , and Kei clutches the phone tighter.

‘Did you find it?’ Tetsurou asks, and he sounds so defeated.

He wishes he could blame those little lovestruck fragments of light, wishes he could say one of them flew right into his eye. But Kei has never lied to Tetsurou, so when the first sob escapes him he doesn’t accompany it with an excuse, or any words at all. Just lets it hang in the distance between them before another follows it, then another, then another.

Then Kei starts to cry in earnest, screwing his face up and knocking his forehead against his knees, barely even able to get a single word out. Not that he needs to; not that he has anything to say.

It so happens, then, that Tetsurou, too, doesn’t say anything this time, just like the last. The only thing that gives away what he’s doing on the other end is Vladimir’s incessant meowing, in a tone Kei has only heard him use twice— once, when Kei first said he loved Tetsurou, and then, again, on the day he left.

 

**v. engagement ring**

Tetsurou watches the daylight wash itself off outside the window, periwinkle sparkles gathering on the silverbells that Kei hung just outside at the start of the season. The day is already ending, but the night has just begun, and this tragic, soothing dusk is his favourite time of the day. The stars aren't fully out, the sun and moon sharing the stage for a brief pocket of time for all the world to watch, and Tetsurou does love to watch. The moon, and Kei, when it's not beautiful enough.

It's his favourite time of the day, and Kei's favourite time of the year. The first moonfall Tetsurou had spent with him, he'd blushed and giggled and closed his eyes when the first of those purple glimmers had fallen over his cheekbones, fluttering to a pause on his long lashes before settling on his skin. More magic than magic in a world of wonders, more gorgeous than gorgeous in a sky full of stars.

There's a reason, then, that Tetsurou has been going out every night to shake those little bells off into the palm of his hand, to empty them into the hollow diamond of the ring. He'll never capture that magic, and he doesn't want to; but at least this way the moon and stars will always be on the same celestial canvas— the silky skin of Kei's hand.

 

** 6\. i know exactly what you need. and i hope you go out and get it. xoxoxo.  **

He knows it has to be past midnight, because all the leaves have fallen, curled into little silver flutes that will lie on the ground all night, only melting into the snow when the sun comes up and announces the start of bluewinter. The sky is inky black so that the bare branches of all the trees can stand out brighter with their silver-painted tips, and for tonight every light in the city comes from candles. In glass jars hung from those very bare branches, or floating in circles near lampposts, their little flames quivering bright and proud in the chilling darkness. The last night of moonfall is the most important night of the year; not even the most cynical of youngsters disrespect the tradition of the candles.

His own steps are led by those little floating glimmers; he keeps attracting looks from passersby, curious and smiling. Finds himself thinking bitterly,  _if only they knew_. Some of the filaments lodge themselves in the thick dragonwool of his scarf and their glow puts phosphenes in his waking vision, and not for the first time since he left his apartment, Kei reconsiders everything.

But resolve would have no value if it wasn’t preceded by hesitation; the test of his love is in the steps he continues to take despite his fear, and if he could be so— so self-righteous and determined on his way out, the least he can do is show some courage on the way back. Then, whether Tetsurou takes him in or not, he’ll know that he lived up to everything his heart was capable of, which, he hopes, will be a reward in itself.

Three years. Kei was twenty-three then; he’s twenty-six now but feels either like he’s aged too much, or that he hasn’t moved from where he was at all. Life didn’t even allow him the illusion of progress when he first left; there was nothing but his misguided sense of freedom to comfort him during those first few months when he felt so…untethered, lost at sea. Hit with the truth that at the end of the day, he is alone inside his body, and what he does with his life is truly up to him. Fighting back with hard work and sleeping charms and vials and vials of invented liquor, fighting back by living as well as he could, with a vengeance, in the beginning. Slowing down when he realised the enemy wasn’t real, that he couldn’t extract revenge against Tetsurou for a wrong he had committed all on his own.

Kei has never really lied to himself either. If a part of him already knew the mistake he’d made when he stepped out of their once-shared home for the last time, it wasn’t that it hid that from the rest of him— just that the fact was still so young and fresh that there was no way for him to notice it. No delusion, no manipulation, just classic, confused childhood.

Maybe he hasn’t moved from where he was, or maybe his miles seem like inches. But if all he’s managed to do in these three years is to make the mental trip from point A to point B, and open his ears to what Tetsurou was saying before he stopped arguing back, then that in itself is more progress than anything else he’s accomplished since he walked out. And that stands for something; it has to.

So he lets the glimmers lead him to an apartment he doesn’t know the location of, and tells himself that maybe he’ll never be the great alchemist he’s always wanted to be, and maybe Tetsurou will only ever work in research in a closed office on the eightieth floor of a building instead of going into the forests up north and looking for Vladimir’s lost clan. Knowing they still make magic together doesn’t mean that Tetsurou will want to, again; after all, who would give someone like Kei a second chance?

Who would give someone like Kei a second chance?

Tetsurou’s apartment building is in the thick of the city, nestled cosily between others of the same height, and Kei can immediately tell which balcony is his for two reasons. The first is that it is covered in silverbells that are falling from the railing and trailing gold dust in the air, and there is the faint sound of that obscure band Tetsurou loves that no one else ever remembers the name of.

The second is that Tetsurou is standing at the railing, ghostly in the candlelight, and looking down at Kei like he’s been waiting for ages.

 

☀︎

 

Tetsurou’s eyes look exhausted, but he passes the glass to Kei as casually as if this was a scheduled meeting. It knocks gently into one of the candles floating in the air, disturbing the flame.

‘Drink up,’ he says, voice a little bruised. ‘You always get headaches when you cry.’

Kei laughs when once upon a time he would’ve scowled, and takes the glass from him. The water is cool and soothing down his throat, and it  _does_  help the slight throbbing behind his eyes. He sets it down and sits down on the couch without asking; Tetsurou follows suit.

They stare at each other for the longest time. Tetsurou at all the glittering purple lights around Kei, and Kei just at Tetsurou, all of him, the changing lights on his face as the candles rise higher or fall lower, his exhausted eyes.

‘Moonfall is almost over,’ Kei says, finally. ‘So many candles outside.’

‘I saw,’ Tetsurou replies. ‘Are you ready for the winter?’

‘Am I ever?’

They both laugh at that, Tetsurou’s old guitar strumming itself gently on the wall it’s mounted on, as they both think back to when they used to throw snowballs at each other like children out on university fields. Kei closes his eyes as the notes turn into an old favourite song, and when he opens them, Tetsurou is holding out his hand for the little lights to land onto. They flutter there as delicate as the last breath before a kiss, and Kei wishes he had actually managed to let Tetsurou go, after all.

‘I have something of yours,’ he says quietly, and Tetsurou looks at him, smiles, a real one. Not half-asleep like in the coffee shop, unaware that his reality had long since changed. In the background, Vladimir stops feigning sleep and cracks his green eye open, watches them carefully.

‘You have more than just something of mine,’ Tetsurou says. ‘But I’ll take the ring, if you please.’

Kei reaches into his pocket and pulls out the little silk pouch that he found to house the ring in, and looks at it one last time before steeling his heart and handing it over. Tetsurou takes it and doesn’t even spare it a glance before putting it away in his own pocket, and Kei doesn’t know which one of them he should be hurt for.

‘So,’ he says, and fights the urge to cringe at how lame his voice sounds. ‘Uh, what else is up?’

Tetsurou blinks at him for a second before bursting into laughter, leaning his head back, brushing dangerously close to a flame as he closes his eyes. Kei can’t help a smile too, despite the fact that his eyes are still burning from how much he cried earlier. Thinking back to it (although it was only two hours ago) it was almost liberating. He doesn’t know if he feels better, but he does feel lighter, and he thinks that’s supposed to be a good thing. It should be easier to move forward, in the event that forward is the correct direction even if it doesn’t lead to Tetsurou.

‘Well,’ Tetsurou says, still laughing a little, ‘I finished that report I was working on, Koutarou cut his hair, and I will always love you.’

Kei’s heart seizes. ‘One of those things is not like the others.’

‘I know. Can you imagine Koutarou finally cut his hair?! Akaashi’s been trying for  _ages_.’

‘I was talking about the fact that you actually finished a report on time, but sure.’ Kei flashes Vladimir a triumphant smirk when the cat meows loudly in approval, and when he turns back, he’s greeted with another real smile.

‘I wish you had given me a chance,’ Tetsurou says softly, and just like that, the lump in Kei’s throat is back.

‘I wish you’d give me another one,’ he chokes out in reply. ‘I just—‘

Moonfall is a season of change. Outside, the silver leaves are enjoying their last few hours before the sun will do away with them, the purest sign that life goes on. He doesn’t think they’ll ever be able to understand why it brought them these things, why it chose this year, this moment. He doesn’t think they’re supposed to; some gifts are given without a word, and it’s up to you what you do with it. The turn of the tide, a shift in the wind, a smile turned into a laugh.

Tetsurou’s guitar is still playing gently when Kei realises that it might be less about moonfall and more about that feeling itself, love suspended. Vladimir’s disappointment, Tetsurou’s disappearing work: reminders that they belong somewhere else. They don’t belong separately; Kei’s stormglass is supposed to be next to Tetsurou’s recipe book— and it is their grip around each others’ hands that is practiced to perfection, not the hands themselves.

They belong somewhere else, a  _somewhere else_  called  _together_.

‘It’s okay,’ Tetsurou says, opening his arms as Kei rushes forward into them, glimmers flying and sparking where they meet the candle flames. ‘Welcome back, partner.’ A somewhere else called home. ‘Let’s make magic together.’  _Trust me_.

‘I don’t want to leave again,’ Kei says, voice muffled in the thick fabric of Tetsurou’s sweater. ‘I never want to  _want_  to leave again.’

‘You’re home now. Next time you want to leave, we can do it together.’

 

☀︎

 

When the sun comes up and the leaves dissolve into the snow, Kei leans over the edge of the balcony railing and shakes out the hollow diamond of the ring. The sparkles flit away in the sunrise air, but he isn’t worried. No matter where they go, they’re bound to come back, like the rush of magic at five in the morning. Like something lost that’s finally found its way.

Then he turns around to the sight of Tetsurou in the doorway, and follows suit.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/soldierpoetking/status/1047051558230339584) and [tumblr](http://sturlsons.tumblr.com/post/178663339324/moonfall-kurootsukishima-14964w-there-is-no).


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